This afternoon I had to head back to my classroom to prepare for my three week stretch at the ALC. First, I was amazed at the remodeling job done on the main entrance. It's spectacular. Plus, they have added some really cool art work to the walls. It really looks first rate.
It was eerie being in school with no one else there. But once I got used to the silence, I really enjoyed being back in my classroom. It was odd being in there with all of my books and personal items packed away in the closets and storage areas. I realized I missed the place. Then I realized how fortunate I am to have a job that I actually miss.
Once I located my internet cord, it was time to get down to business. I had to print out assignments for tomorrow. Mandy, the who teaches English during the school year at the ALC, set me up with some great classes: Accessing Information, Science Fiction, and Creative Writing. I'm looking forward to each of them.
I had to devise a few other assignments that I've had knocking around in my head for a couple weeks now. For Accessing Information, I copied the lyrics to Billy Joe's "We Didn't Start the Fire," which is really a long list of allusions to historical figures and events. Then I assigned each student two of the allusions. Tomorrow they will search the internet for the definitions of the allusions. Then they will write a summary of each and cite them correctly. When that is done, I have a list of topics set for them to do another research project on. This is gearing them up for their first big assignment, which I stole from Jeff, a history teacher at LHS, where students will select a song about an issue or event, such as Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" (obviously, about the wreck of the ship the Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior) or Iron Maiden's "The Longest Day" (about D-Day). Then they will create a keynote presentation summarizing the issue or event their song focuses on. The presentation will end with an imovie project matching the lyrics from their song to images they scour off the internet that reflect the song's topic. That should keep them buys for the rest of the week.
Then I had to make copies of the Philip K Dick's classic "The Father-Thing" for Sci Fi. I already had a reading guide to accompany the story, but I will also have students create a Comic Life comic strip of the story.
Finally, for Creative Writing, we will begin with poetry. Tomorrow they will write a bio poem and then a pantoum. We'll see how that goes. I've taught the bio poems before but not the pantoums, though I've written them previously at the RRVWP. Again, we'll see how that goes. But both poems are based on formulas, so that should make writing them easier for students, who, I fear, will be reluctant to poetry. (For more on the pantoum, see the end of this entry).
On my way out, I figured I'd stop by the upstairs bathroom first. It seems that too is undergoing a first rate renovation. I always figured that since we were tucked away on the second floor, that bathroom would never get the major overhaul our downstairs bathrooms got. I figured the powers that be only poured the big bucks into those because they were the ones the public used most often for our renovated auditorium and for athletic events in our gym.
However, I was wrong! The upstairs bathrooms are getting the full make over too.
By the time I left, I was already anxious for fall to be here.
***
My pantoum from last summer (I believe the topic had to do with sentences/descriptions of summer). There are eight original lines and eight lines that are repeated. See if you can decipher the formula. Thankfully, there is no need to worry about a rhyme scheme either.
An Early Summer Morning on Columbia Road
Clouds roll heavy on the horizon
Squirrels scurry from lawn to limb to rooftop and back
Traffic pulses, congests, grinds to a halt then flows again
Coffee roars on the tongue and wakens the brain.
Squirrels scurry from lawn to limb to rooftop and back
The fair is here; summer is almost gone
Coffee roars on the tongue and wakes the brain
The dog days are coming fast.
The fair is here; summer is almost gone
August’s hazy heat awaits
The dog days are coming fast
I should never wear a watch in the summer.
Clouds roll heavy on the horizon
Traffic pulses, congests, grinds to a halt then flows again
August’s hazy heat awaits
I should never wear a watch in the summer.
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